Dry processes, such as plasma etching, reactive ion etching and the like, are of increasing importance in the manufacture of semiconductor devices. The need for greater throughput and yield in such manufacture has driven the development and implementation of more highly automated plasma processing machinery. Simultaneously, the high fixed costs involved in semiconductor manufacture demand highly reliable and easily serviceable machines. Further, it is desirable that such machines be adaptable to handle several of the standard wafer sizes in common use.
Plasma processing machines of the single wafer, planar electrode type commonly use one of the reactor electrodes as a wafer carrying stage in the loading and unloading of the reactor. Processing machines of this type have suffered from a lack of easy serviceability of the reactor and chuck and have not been easily reconfigurable to accommodate different wafer sizes and/or processes.